The penultimate Keep Writing Challenge assignment is to write a 300-word story using the prompt "hex."
The Shutdown Sultan
The
Shutdown Sultan surveys the landscape of Mindy’s mind. He has feasted and
controlled here. For thirteen weeks he has reigned here. The once-lush valley surely
lies spent and exhausted in the wake of the Sultan’s invasion. Surely the spark
of creativity he forced from her is extinguished!
The
Sultan’s eye lingers on the myriad colorful canvases littering the atelier of Mindy’s
home. Landscapes, seascapes, field flowers (relics of the remembered Outside)
dominate the room. Giant roses, tulips, lilies-of-the-valley, and poppies grow in
abundance. Flowers of indeterminate origin, many cultivated only in Mindy’s
mind, threaten to burst the walls. Colorful splotches and splatters mar the floor;
half-finished and hideous abstracts dare the timid to enter.
He sighs. A small
doubt has pushed into his consciousness. Has
the isolation borne fruit? Has the enforced creativity devastated as he
intended, or has its hex turned on him?
Turning
his back on the offending atelier, the Shutdown Sultan strides into the study.
Surely here he will find affirmation of damage from Mindy’s hex-induced creativity.
His attention centers on Mindy’s laptop, and hope reignites in his heart. The
device languishes beside the reading chair, exhausted but maintaining a tight
hold on the 70 little stories that bear witness to Mindy’s dogged adherence to
the Keep Writing Challenge.
The
Sultan scrolls through the vagaries of Mindy’s mind as shown in her fiction.
She has visited far-off lands, enjoyed the company of family and imaginary
creatures, found adventure, made friends, honed skills. She has lived in her
words, her scenes, her stories. Mindy’s creativity has taken the Sultan’s
restrictions and pushed her to write, compelled her to paint, forced her to
pound the ivories.
My fortress was so
strong! He thinks. How can it be that a simple creature like
Creativity subverted the power of the Shutdown Sultan?!
No comments:
Post a Comment